CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 47 



1. INDIA 



Even were it not supremely interesting for 

 the size, variety and abundance of its big" game, 

 India would surely be entitled to the first place 

 in any English account of the creatures of the 

 jungle, since it is to India that the vast majority 

 of Englishmen turn fora career military, civil, 

 or mercantile after finishing their education 

 at home. Thanks partly to the religious 

 objection entertained by many of the natives 

 for taking life in any form, and partly to wise 

 game laws enforced of recent years by the 

 British rulers of the country, the wild animals 

 have survived in India as in no other region so 

 densely populated. 



The extent to which Indian wild animals 

 have survived in the midst of a civilisation 

 thousands of years old is really remarkable, 

 though it is a fact with which we have grown 

 so familiar that we do not always appreciate 

 its significance in the relations between wild 

 creatures and the natives, looking on such 

 episodes as no more extraordinary than if they 

 happened in newly developed districts of 

 British East Africa, which, down to a few 

 years ago, were unreclaimed wilderness. The 

 following is a case in point. 



Early in the present year (1912) a full-grown 

 panther, prowling on a much-used line in Berar, 



